I'm writing this program for my own edification. I want to write and retrieve from a database. I will start on Linux and probably use MySql. After I get the program working on Linux I would like to be able to use it on a Windows 7 or 8 platform. Here are some sample entries I would like to write to and draw from. Which database would you use? Does MySql work on both Linux and Windows?

Casino Date Buy-in time-at-table exit-monies
Binions 05/05/2015 200 3.5 -400
Wynns 05/06/2015 200 5.0 +400

Trip Total -200

Thank you;

Sherman

Hi
Yes

But:
MySql now belongs to Oracle and as Mr. Ellison is hardcore commercial, the focus of MySQL is/will probably to push you towards some kind of paid license.

Recommendation
0)
It doesn't matter very much what you'll put into the DB - the "what you want to do with it" is more important.
1):
use "MariaDB", which is the open-source fork of MySQL.
(I think that I read on wikipedia that "My" was the name of the first child of the guy who created "MySQL" and "Maria" was the other child - or maybe I'm just stupid to believe that)
In any case the recommendation stands - I'm using it for some tables that hold a couple of million rows and it's working fine.
2)
Use some abstract layer.
I used "PDO" with PHP and I didn't regret it.
I have no clue about Perl - from what I'm finding now you might want to use "PDI", just have a loook around.

If you program to the abstract DBI module, then you can use the DBD driver for any database on the back end. There are a lot of DBDs supporting everything from Excel to Oracle.